President's Message
Thanks
to all of you for giving me the honor of serving as your ETPA President
for 2010. This will be an exciting year, and I hope that all of us will
learn more about our profession and enjoy ourselves as members of ETPA.
My vision for 2010 is to provide all of us the opportunity to engage in
very useful and interesting professional development training and to
increase our membership. To achieve this vision, I’ve outlined three
objectives to pursue:
1.
To host a combined ETPA/TAPP professional development conference this
fall that provides our members with interesting and useful
training—while promoting networking opportunities. Preliminary planning
already is underway for this exciting event. We’re going to make every
effort to lower the cost of attending the conference, in order to make
attendance
affordable at a time when governmental budgets are at low ebb.
2. To host a Business Matchmaking
event this summer, which provides
small businesses throughout East Tennessee the opportunity to speak
one-on-one with procurement officials from both governmental entities
and large corporations. This event also has the potential to increase
our membership. We’ll extend an invitation to participate to some
non-member governmental organizations and their participation will
allow them to see first hand the benefits of being a part of ETPA.
3. To acquire top notch speakers for our general membership meetings
who are well qualified to speak to us concerning procurement topics
that are of current interest.
To help achieve these goals and objectives, we have an excellent group
of people who’ll be working toward these goals. You’ll find a listing
of our Board of Directors on page 2 of our February newsletter and the
Committee Chairs on page 3—please contact them with your ideas for
programs, activities or just to volunteer!
I’m excited about the plans being developed for this year, and I hope
that you will all join me at our next general membership meeting on
Thursday, May 6, 2010.
Boyce Evans
President, East Tennessee Purchasing Association
